Afterlife

by TheNewIdea

He had heard stories, mostly of Commander Shepard, and the rumors of Garrus' involvement in them. Although he doubted the validity of some, especially the ones about the thresher maw and the Collector base, Grizz believed that Garrus had helped stop Saren. This was enough for Grizz to convince Aria to hire him as a bouncer, a relatively safe job.

The air in Afterlife was rank with the smell of booze and sweat. The music, which was always loud and pulsing, resonated through the club with such ferocity that it was almost a threat. As far as people went, everyone from the strippers that walked the halls and danced the poles, to the bartenders- all of whom were uninteresting and never had anything to say- were deemed valuable assets. Downstairs, a deal between Aria and Patriarch had just gone through, credits were paid, illegal weapons were distributed and intimacies were had. All in all, things were relatively normal. The only abnormal thing in the whole place was Garrus Vakarian.

Sitting at one of the bars, Garrus, sulking to himself and wanting nothing more than to disappear, downed another drink and tried his best not to look at anything. In his head, he began to hum Gilbert and Sullivan, fondly reminiscing Mordin Solus, one of the only friends he ever bothered to have. It was funny, Garrus thought, how many of his friends came from his time on the Normandy, it was almost before he did not have a life, or if he did, if it was never truly complete until he started investigating Saren.

Garrus' bartender, a salarian, calmly began wiping his counter with a white bar rag, Garrus, at seeing this, was instantly reminded of Shepard, specifically, the human expectation that all bartenders stereotypically owned a white rag and were always available for customers to spill their problems and concerns onto them as if they were empty garbage bins. The turian could not help but laugh to himself, for anything that reminded him of Shepard was a good thought.

"So is this the part where I tell you about my problems?" Garrus began jokingly, "Or do you have to ask me: "what's wrong" first?"

The salarian, whose name was Lokann, looked up completely perplexed and generally put off by the question, not really sure if he should answer or if he should tell him off. Taking the middle ground, Lokann went with both.

"Your problems; not my concern" he replied, "I've told you, I'm a bartender not a consoler. Now do you want a drink or not?"

Garrus laughed and stood beside himself, personally delighted in the fact that he had been taken somewhat literally. It was to be expected with salarians, but still, he figured if anything he would take a chance and at the very least get a mild laugh out of it to lighten his spirits, which due to the amount of alcohol in his system, was an incredibly easy thing to do.

"Relax Lokann" Garrus continued, "It's a joke. As for the drink, go ahead and pour me another one. I want to be able to forget last week."

"What happened last week?" the bartender asked candidly.

Garrus glanced over his shoulder, taking note of Grizz, one of Aria's bodyguards, and turned around, staring into his glass. Sighing and pitying himself, Garrus nervously rapped on the counter, deciding not to answer the question and simply drop the matter, reminding himself never to talk to another salarian while drunk and looking to be taken figuratively. As Lokann topped Garrus off, making it the turian's fifth of the night, Grizz, taking a sudden interest, for he had been nonchalantly watching Garrus for the past twenty minutes, made his way over to the bar, brandishing his rifle, an empty thermal clip inside.

"You keep drinking like that and you'll wind up dead" Grizz exclaimed as he came up from behind, "If it's all the same to you Aria prefers that you remain alive."

"I don't give a damn what Aria prefers" Garrus replied as he returned his attention to his drink, "If it's all the same to you Grizz."

Grizz sighed and shook his head, pitying him. In the short time that he had known Garrus all he had seen was a broken man with nothing but memories and questions; he did not know the strong, proud and charismatic Garrus, whose empathy knew no bounds. Still despite this, he had heard stories, mostly of Commander Shepard, and the rumors of Garrus' involvement in them. Although he doubted the validity of some, especially the ones involving the thresher maw and the Collector base, Grizz believed that Garrus had helped stop Saren. This was enough for Grizz to convince Aria to hire him as a bouncer, a relatively safe job.

"Fine" Grizz returned, "Do whatever you want, just don't say that I didn't warn you when she throws you out. You've got a good thing going here Garrus. Most people don't get the kind of chances you've had."

Garrus nodded and slowly began to steady himself, causing Lokann to glance up from his work and reach towards him. The bartender wasn't entirely sure why he had suddenly cared for Garrus' wellbeing, maybe it was because patrons with problems were a big part of his business, or maybe it was because they were both employees of Aria. Whatever the reason was, it was enough for him to react and then, upon the assessment that Garrus was not going to immediately fall over, return to his work, with one attentive eye fixed squarely on the empty stools in front of his bar.

"Don't tell me the chances I've had" Garrus began defensively, "You couldn't even begin to imagine them."

Grizz smiled and casually looked around, making sure that everything was normal. Once he was confident that nothing was out of the ordinary, he became more confident in the decision he was about to make, still, if only to cover his tracks and ease his mind of any potential doubt, Grizz motioned over to the nearest guard, a krogan.

"Cover for me will you?" Grizz exclaimed as he shouldered his weapon, "I'll got an errand for Aria to run, I won't be long."

The krogan nodded and took Grizz's post, after which Grizz returned his attention to Garrus, who was now standing and slowly making his way toward the door. Stumbling and groaning in annoyance and pain, Garrus, in his head, began reciting a poem that he had memorized in a feeble attempt to win Shepard over. He could not remember exactly who wrote it, what it was even about or if it was even something that she considered romantic; the only thing he could remember was that Shepard smiled because of it, which was all that mattered.

"I tried so hard at this/But me, you did not miss/So now it's time to go. I'm done feeling so low/I'm done trying so hard/Always ending up scarred-"

Grizz gently placed a hand on Garrus' shoulder, stopping him and causing him to turn around. Shaking his head, trying to regain control, Garrus, taking Grizz's support, gave in and allowed himself to be led out of the bar.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself Garrus" Grizz said as he shouldered him and pushed aside a few patrons, giving them room to pass; heading for the VIP section and the back door of Afterlife, "I'm taking a big risk with you. I don't know what's going on, and frankly I don't want to know, but whatever it is you owe it to yourself to pull it together. What would Shepard think of you if she could see you now?"

At the sound of Shepard's name Garrus, for the moment at least, returned out of himself.

"I know exactly what she would think" Garrus replied softly, the alcohol inhibiting his normal volume levels, in addition to his depressed state, "Disappointment. You're better than this Garrus, she would say; this isn't you. And then, afterwards, maybe a bit of Pride. A bit of Love. I'm so proud of you, she says, you're the best thing that ever happened. The best thing."

Grizz, who wasn't necessarily looking for a dissertation, realizing too late that Garrus was rambler when he was drunk, rolled his eyes and sighed; strong-arming him into a forward direction.

"Give it a rest will you!" Grizz replied, shoving him a bit as they crossed the threshold of Afterlife, finally leaving the noise of the club and entering the unsettling quiet of Omega's back alleys, "You're worse than me; and trust me that's saying something."

Garrus laughed bluntly and casually leaned on Grizz's shoulder as his body became more dependent, the full effects of the alcohol taking their toll. Grizz, in response, pushed Garrus' head back, causing it to lean the other way, at the same time resulting in Grizz to temporarily lose his grip and drop him, Garrus landing on weak knees and collapsing to the ground, slipping into unconsciousness.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Grizz said, talking to himself and berating Garrus at the same time, "Get up you drunk bastard, get up!"

Garrus did nothing, for there was not much that he could do given his unconsciousness. In his head however he was back on the Normandy, sitting on Shepard's couch, in front of him a chess game, next to him, the only person that mattered calling checkmate. He remembered smiling and laughing at his defeat, complementing Shepard's skill of the mind and equating it to her skill of battle. It was one of the calmer moments he had shared with her, and one of the happiest; not because it was particularly noteworthy in terms of their relationship but because it was normal.

Grizz meanwhile was busy trying to lift Garrus off the ground and failing in the effort, for he was incredibly heavy and had officially become dead weight. Looking around to see if anyone could help him, and finding no one, the turian, realizing that he was on his own, resigning himself to his task and bending his knees, used all of his available strength to lift Garrus' upper body, just enough for him to get a grip, allowing the legs to drag where they would and praying that his own knees would hold on; Grizz, a few years prior, having suffered an accident that shattered his right knee, resulting in months of corrective surgery and the addition of a brace as part of his normal routine. He was still, in many ways, a very capable turian, at least in the ways that it counted, but he knew that things would never be the same.

"Alright you sad piece of shit" Grizz grumbled, "Let's get you home."

In his head, Grizz was thinking about all the different ways that Aria was going to hurt him when she found about Garrus' condition. He always wondered why Aria had agreed to take Garrus on, maybe as one of those personal obligations to Shepard that she had promised but were now impossible to directly fulfill; maybe it was because he had information and was willing to use it and so brought him in to keep him quiet, or maybe it was because Garrus wanted to disappear and forget as much as possible and this was the only way he knew how to do it. Whatever the case might have been, the reality of the situation was that Aria, just like so many others including Grizz himself, had bought Garrus' life, for everything has a price tag, all the rest is hidden in the details.

Grizz turned a corner and entered the apartment district. It was then that he remembered an important detail, he had no idea which apartment Garrus lived in, for the day Garrus came to the area he was stuck in Afterlife getting chewed by Aria for something that he didn't do; he didn't even remember what it was about, only that Aria was clearly pissed about it, which was enough to ensure that he did only what was required from that day forward. Ironically, by taking Garrus to his apartment he was technically breaking protocol, for any employee that was caught drunk on company property was at best, fired, and at worst, executed, image being one of the most important parts of Aria's operation. If her employees slacked in any capacity, she was obligated to get rid of them in order to maintain her dominance. Grizz, who thought about this extensively, could not help but notice another irony, that Aria was screwing Patriarch, her "trophy", which if discovered and made public knowledge, had the potential to weaken her position. It was his job to make sure that didn't happen, and so far things had gone as smoothly as one would expect.

Taking a guess and not bothering to check Garrus' pockets for any kind of key card, or his omni-tool, which would have undoubtedly contained such a thing, Grizz came to the nearest door and knocked. Why he knocked when he knew that Garrus lived alone was a force of habit, a quirk he had picked up from some of the humans he had met as a kind of courtesy. Of course, he did not entirely understand the need for it, if a door was locked once could always attempt a hack, but still, if only on good faith and in the chance that he had picked the wrong door Grizz knocked. Readjusting Garrus, who was slowly waking up, in a deep drunken haze, Grizz shook his head, amazed at his own stupidity and gently laid Garrus next to the door, after which he began to hack. Not being the greatest hacker in the world, for he did not have the technical expertise akin to Garrus' nor was he was a quarian, it took some time. Annoyed that he was doing the one thing that he was a novice at, Grizz, in an attempt to ease his mind and concentrate on the task at hand, began to sing. It was Gilbert and Sullivan, a play he had seen four times. Grizz's singing, which was something that he usually kept to himself, was enough to wake Garrus up from his stupor, much to his chagrin.

"Hey Grizz" Garrus exclaimed, a little bit louder than before, his rest rejuvenating some of his spirit, "Did I ever tell you about the time that I saved the galaxy?"

Grizz nodded, for it was perhaps the only thing that Garrus talked about with any degree of confidence, which was strange given his desire to disappear. Maybe it was an effort to hold on to whatever was left, or maybe it was an attempt to make peace with things. It didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things as far as Grizz was concerned, for he was not Garrus' confident nor was he in any considerable way his friend. To Grizz, Garrus was a valuable business asset, a way of not getting beaten by Aria; there was almost nothing personal about it.

"Running through the London city streets, husks and Reaper spawn at every corner. Low on ammo and still throwing everything I had into it. One too many times I thought I wasn't going to make it out."

Grizz, who was almost through the door, luck having held out, was only halfway listening, not interested in rumors and tall-tales of heroism at the moment, for he could think of a million better stories than the exploits of Commander Shepard and the Normandy. True, none of them had the impact of the Reaper War, most of them historical but there were a few fictional works as well, such as Morning Star, an existentialist piece by an anonymous hanar but attributed to Forta, the visual artist. The novel, about a group of various aliens traveling the galaxy in search of a mythical door said to grant the wishes of anyone who stepped inside of it, was one of Grizz's favorite books. He always had an interest in "the human condition" referred among the other races as "the individualist complex", and perhaps if he had aspired to it, probably could have been a decent psychologist or a doctor of some kind. But here he was, hacking open a door and under the service of Aria. Grizz, never the type to air his complaints openly, kept these thoughts to himself and continued working on the door.

The door opened, revealing a turian and a quarian, a male and female respectfully, sitting on a couch watching vids. Looking into the apartment, Grizz couldn't help but notice that everything appeared to be relatively clean, an unusual sight on Omega. On the wall that ran with the door, opposite the back of the couch, were several pictures, some of them vacation photos, and others of seemingly random people, among them a volus, a krogan, a batarian, and a human. Who these people were was of little significance, especially to Grizz, whose only real concern at the moment was recovering from his mistake at essentially breaking and entering.

"Grizz" the quarian said, standing up and taking the initiative, "What are you doing here? Aria looking for protection money again? We already paid for the full year!"

Grizz nodded and sighed, the day had already been long enough and complicated enough dealing with Garrus, now in addition, he had to deal with this; it was going to be a long night.

"I know Howan" Grizz replied, "I'm not here for that. Sorry for the disturbance, give Julivius my best. Tell him he still owes me for Gilbert and Sullivan."

Howan nonchalantly folded her arms and shook her head, refusing to believe that Grizz was willing to stoop so low as to continually dog Julivius for something that had happened so long ago; still, it was better than the extortion racket that Aria ran, and so it was at least partially acceptable.

"Any particular reason why you thought it was necessary to hack my door?" Howan asked condescendingly, "Or did you think that because you work for Aria you can go where you please?"

Grizz raised his hand, bidding for peace; by this point Julivius was standing and had made his way over to Howan. At this, Grizz became more relaxed, for he always had an easier time communicating with his own kind than with other species.

"Do you know where Garrus lives?" Grizz exclaimed, practically begging for an answer, "The bastard got so drunk he can barely stand. You know how Aria is with these kind of things, one slip and you're done."

Howan and Julivius stood beside themselves, it was surprising to hear Grizz going out of his way to actively help someone. True, they suspected that he had his own personal motives for getting Garrus out of Afterlife and away from Aria's immediate purview, but it was still the act that counted, not the reason for which it was done.

"Vakarian's place is around the corner" Julivius answered, pointing left, "Last door on the right. His omni-tool should have the key embedded in it."

Grizz nodded once again and calmly turned away, bending down and shouldering Garrus once more, who had returned to sleep. Before he could leave however, Howan stopped him, placing a hand on his shoulder, causing him to partially turn around.

"Don't judge him" Howan pleaded, "He's been through a lot. More than most."

Grizz smiled and laughed as if he were insulted, "Come on Howan it's me we're talking about here" he defended, "Besides, everyone on Omega's been through something."

As Grizz walked away and turned the corner, Howan closed the door and sighed. Turning to Julivius, she smiled as she remembered something that a friend had told her once, a poem.

"Now God can carry me through/Because up there somewhere in the blue/He has a special plan for me."

Julivius laughed and placed an arm around her, leading her back to the couch to resume the vid.

"You always did have thing for human poetry" Julivius declared lovingly, "Who was it? Tennyson again?"

"TR Jones" Howan answered, "Fitting I suppose."

Julivius sighed contently and nodded, for it was one thing that Howan knew it was people and what they needed. He was proud to call her his wife, he could think of no other kind of life worth living. It was a good feeling. As he sat down on the couch he readjusted his grip on her shoulder, promising himself that he would never let go.

By the time Grizz reached Garrus' door almost an hour had passed since he left Afterlife. He knew that Aria was going to kill him, but at the moment he didn't really care; the only thing he cared about was getting some sleep, as far as he was concerned, whatever punishment he deserved could wait until tomorrow. Lifting up Garrus' omni-tool and opening the door, Grizz, turning on the lights, was surprised to find the apartment a complete and total mess. Granted, most of the apartments were not clean, but they were at least inhabitable; this went well beyond any aesthetic on the part of Omega. With furniture that was molded, broken, and unorganized, scattered about the room nonsensically, to the piles of rubble that had accumulated from a collapsing ceiling, it was a wonder anyone called it home. Grizz assumed that this was exactly the point, for if someone wanted to disappear, this was the last place anyone would think to look; still, it was rather sad to find that such matters were deemed necessary in the first place.

Shuffling Garrus inside and struggling to find the bed in the darkness, for the electricity had decided to cut itself off no sooner than the lights had turned on, Grizz struggled to breathe, the sheer amount of dust, mold, and smell of feces, unceremoniously left in the bathroom on the far right which possessed, among other things, a broken toilet, was enough to make him throw up, adding to the problem. Rounding a corner and hitting his bad knee on a dresser, knocking over a few pictures on the way, Grizz resisted the urge to curse and, fighting through the pain and the darkness, finally reached the bedroom in the back of the apartment. Taking no time to examine anything, save for the bed, which was the cleanest thing he had seen thus far, Grizz, tried from carrying Garrus' dead weight, threw him on the bed stomach down and then flipped him over. Sighing, the ordeal done, Grizz closed his eyes and began to pray to the spirits and rub his knee. He prayed for the things that most pray about, but for some reason added a bit for Garrus, if anything wishing that he would get back to normal so that his job and his life would have a chance of being saved.

It was then that Grizz remembered a book that he had once read on human lore and their poems, how each one carried with its own meaning and interpretation depending on the reader. Looking around the space and briefly taking note of the state of things, he found one particular entry especially fitting, both in terms of himself and in terms of Garrus.

"I tried so hard at this/But me, you did not miss/So now it's time to go. I'm done feeling so low/I'm done trying so hard/Always ending up scarred/Now God can carry me through/Because up there somewhere in the blue/He has a special plan for me/ But to him I must place one plea/Don't let me finish my time here alone/To wonder through my last years on my own."

With this Grizz left the room, careful not to hit his knee on anything else. Grabbing a key card he had found on a nearby dresser and guessing correctly that it went to front door, Grizz, satisfied that he had done everything in his power, left the apartment and locked the door, as Gilbert and Sullivan entered his head once again. He wasn't entirely sure what was going to happen when he returned to Afterlife, he hoped that Aria would be reasonable- after all there wasn't a lot of business anyway. Still, if only to ease his own mind, Grizz doubled-timed and got back to the club in five minutes time.